Angie Arcangioli: ramblings of an artist in Paris

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Monday, 19 October 2015

It's been wonderful but now I have to move on. I'm leaving you for Wordpress... Ten years of life together, it had to end sometime. I can't say I love you, I don't think I ever did. Your limitations outweigh your advantages. Call me fickle, I don't care. You, dear blog, can't incorporate into my website, it's your fault if you can't keep up with the times. You know, that branding thing.

Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Congratulations! You won the International Prize Michelangelo.

I am very proud to award you with the International Prize Michelangelo - Artists at the Jubilee

The Prize is for the Artists that are worth for their artistic merit.

I merit the prize, of course I do. Why else would they pick me? They are very proud of me.

You will be awarded on December 10th, 2015, inside the Cardinal Cesi Palace in Rome

If the artist will not be present at the awards ceremony, the prize will be sent home.

It is one of the most prestigious art awards awarded in the heart of Rome.

In conjunction with the opening of the 2015 Jubilee, the prestigious rooms of “Palazzo

Cardinal Cesi” in Rome, will host the awarding ceremony of the International event ‘’INTERNATIONALPRIZE MICHELANGELO -Artists at the Jubilee’’. It is an exclusive prize representing the Mosessculpture, one of the most importantworks by Michelangelo Buonarroti.

It's exclusive. Oh yeah!

Important celebrities from the world of culture will be present at the ceremony

and the talented artists will be awarded with an important prize for their careers.

In the November/December number of the magazine Effetto Arte, we will realize an introductive piece about Rome Jubilee and the several masterpieces of the city; following to the piece the publication of the selcted artists’ artworks.

I thrilled I've been "selcted."

The Palazzo Cardinal Cesi in rome, is far just 100mt from Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, where during the same days will take place the Jubilee.

Where's rome? Maybe they mean Rome. Is that Mount Vatican or Mt One-Hundred? Where's the the in this sentence?

The Palace has hosted important men of culture, including: the New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nietoand important Ambassadors from around the world.

The prize is given to those artists who has been chosen by Mr. Someone and Someone Else.

Squee. I'm in good company Neitoand was there.

You will be eligible for:

- A whole page on the November/December number of the magazine into the column “INTERNATIONAL PRIZE MICHELANGELO - Artists at the JUBILEE”

- Publication on a quarter of page into the official catalog of the event.

- Conferment of the Michelangelo Award, a sculpture representing Michelangelo's Moses (20 cm/h) on December 10th 2015 at Palazzo Someplace in Rome.

One of those resin Moses sculptures I can buy at the leaning tower of Pisa? They're going to put me into a column? What about some of those Leaning Tower of Pisa Boxer Shorts?

- Insertion of the name of the artist into the advertisement pages dedicated to the event on

- Two copies of the magazine (November/December). N°1 copy of ''The'' catalog.

- An assignment certificate in a precious celebratory parchment

I get an assignment? I wonder if I'll have to take exams. Perhaps they need a content writer.

To take part you must send:

- Filled out application form

- 1 Picture of your Artwork

- Copy of the payment

By e-mail to:

or by mail to:

Dott. Someone

Via Somestreet

(Italia)

Cost of the proposal: 330€

Wait a minute, I thought I won?

Deadline: October 10, 2015

Please, at the order form pay the requested amount for your choice with a Bank transfer:

HOLDER: ASS. S&@# CULT #@& EDITORE

IBAN CODE: IT-- XXXX redacted XXXX XXXx @#?! 969

BIC/SWIFT: #@&69#@ redacted

BANK: BANCO Somebank -

(Please specify in the reason, your name and the name of the event)

You can also pay via paypal at this address: ..696##!! redacted .gmail.com

Sincerely

Someone

Thanks,

I'll put this on my to do list. Meanwhile, you can take me off your mailing list unless you want to hire an editor or an English speaking content writer. I'll send you my paypal account and an invoice for editing suggestions to the above.

Friday, 11 September 2015

Fourteen
years ago we were all somewhere. Some were too young to remember, like when I was little
and my father awoke me to show me the black and white television when the first
astronauts walked on the moon.They
planted a flag.The American flag, a
flag from the planet Earth.

I confuse
this man-on-the-moon memory with the night my father awoke me to show the cat
had kittens.She took to the unused
space under the kitchen sink.Childhood
memories spark from photographs and can develop through stories parents tell. Or from remembering extraneous events seemingly related.Fact becomes fiction and vice versa. They
become beleifs.

My memories
of September 11th 2001 ring crystal in my mind.

I was in my
atelier-gallery in Florence Italy with my ex-husband, a wonderful man and great
painter.We had just opened our painting
space after years of street vending.We
opened on September 6th2001.Those were the days of plenty in the seven
most industrialized countries. Italy was one of them. Our atelier was in
Florence.

A wonderful
couple came into our shop.I’ll call it
a shop but it really was our painting atelier, in Florence’s downtown gallery
district. On via Ghibellina. Frescoes
arched across the ceiling, terracotta tiles covered the floor, our paintings
lined four walls.The couple told me
they were on a win-win vacation. They loved our paintings, paid for a few and
said they would return to pick up the packed canvases with frames.We didn’t have a radio, we listened to
classical music, heads in the clouds.On
the shop window, I’d taped a photo of one of my best clients who posed next to
Bill Clinton, plus several photos of myself on NBC, clearly marking our space
as American friendly.This was the
touristic district of Florence.We made
and sold paintings for the tourism market.We painted poppies by the field.Americans were our best clients after the Berlin wall fell and the
Germans counted their marks and after I was interviewed by Matt Laur live from
Florence.

We packed
the paintings, carefully.We waited for
them to return.

A
Florentine woman across the street who held an electrician’s shop came to tell
me what was happening.I didn’t
understand what she was talking about.She had a TV in the back room. It was inconceivable. A movie.She drug me across the street and pulled me
to the back room.

Look.

I saw the
television.

It was
after the second tower had been hit. It was news.

I didn’t
react, not immediately. But I got on the telephone to speak with my
family.An expat calling home. It took hours
of busy signals before I reached home.My father was stuck in Washington, he could see the smoke off the
pentagon, but he was fine.

A crazy bum
on the street walked by the shop. He was a Northern European, with letters
tattooed on his forehead.A vocal,
insane man, tall and someone I’d cross the street to avoid but someone I saw
almost everyday.He ranted more than
usual, like there was something in the air. He moved on. Then a American lady
came in the shop.

She’d just
arrived in Florence, rented an apartment and was trying to stay awake to knock
jet lag. She’d turned on the television and thought she was watching a
movie.Internet wasn’t available. WIFI
wasn’t conceived. She didn’t have cable. After the movie went no where, she
realized she was watching an Italian news channel.She left her apartment and happened into our shop.I didn’t react. It was all just too weird.

During that
afternoon it was like traffic stopped in Florence.Traffic was insane in Florence. Our shop was up the street from the place were certain guys prayed.I don’t know what they called the place. It
was a shop like ours. Terracotta floors, four walls but barren. Hundreds
of these guys walked the street, against traffic, the wrong way. Chins in the
air.

I removed
the photos in the window and closed the door. It had an automatic lock, you had
to be buzzed in. The wonderful couple returned. Their smiles gone, bewilderment
and worry filled their eyes. Their win-win vacation over.

That night
a friend of mine told me she went to dinner at her boyfriend’s restaurant.Many Florentine shop owners, not Italians but nationality is unimportant, dined there,
people who sold leather jackets and bags to tourists.My friend
told me these people uncorked champagne and told the whole restaurant they would send their children to death
as kamikazes. It was appalling. Remembering is appalling.Others told me the American’s deserved it.I wonder what they think now? After the
Charlie Hebdo attacks, after a little girl carried a bomb into a Nigerian
market, while Syria is still happening. Were these people not living it up in
the win-win laic land of plenty? Spitting in the hand that fed them.

A news stand window the day after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. The front page of every paper from around the world was displayed.

I reacted a
week later after seeing my fellow compatriots walk in single file behind their
tour guides.Shoulders hunched. Like
dogs with tails between their legs. Dollars locked in their pockets. Worried
for their family back home and probably unable to conceive that they were away,
partying and incapable to return home. They were stranded in a foreign place
because all flights States-bound were cancelled.

I'm reacting now, fourteen years later.

I can’t
celebrate this day, September 11th. But I do stand up for my right
as a laic woman who can speak freely and dress the way she desires.

I cannot
fathom the hate for fellow humans on the planet earth. In a solar system. In a
universe surrounded by stars.

I cannot
fathom gravity. How shoes hang from a wire. Fathom why all human beings, plants, animals remain with their
paws stuck to a ball made of minerals and gasses. And not fall off into
space.I cannot fathom how fish remain
swimming in water and not float off into the air.I cannot fathom killing for a belief that
another human being invented.

Today I am
in Paris. I walk the streets and see signs of past wars. Bullet scars on
buildings. Plaques on schools remembering deported children. A plaque in the
metro station where a bomb ripped open a metro car in 1995.

Anyone who
loves Street Art, like myself, believes it’s all about the fun, and the
exposure. Tossing athlete's foot spores to the wind is not the
exposure I’m talking about.Street
artists want exposure, they force it on you.In urban environments tagging and Street Art is ubiquitous, so much so,
we don’t see it anymore.It’s nearly as
invisible as copy. Like copywriting.

Though Street Art is about exposure, I think Shoe Tossing is an intimate gest.You have this pair of shoes you love, which
have witnessed great and terrible moments in your life.You can’t throw them away because they embody
your experience like certain songs you play until your family tells you they’ll
strangle you.Those shoes you love so
much, that you wore until you felt the tarmac on the ball of your foot.You have to memorialize them some how.No one will want them, not with your fungus
and that hole the size of a peach stone.Can’t give them to Goodwill. Can’t toss them in the trash.It’s like throwing away a slice of your
life. You honor them and toss them
over a wire, on a street near home or work, at night when nobody is
watching.At night because, no, those are
not your shoes, they just look like a pair you owned.

I threw a
pair of shoes off a ferry into the Mediterranean and over the Ponte Vecchio
bridge.No one knew, until now.I remember one of those pairs.I remember shopping for them.One was black roach-killer ankle boots.Sigh.The other I can’t remember and now they’re probably in a shark’s belly.

It is
believed that Shoe Tossing has folk origins, this article states it has to do with “ancient ceremony or rite in connection with the transfer of property".

The
techniques of Shoefiti often include shoes with laces and a strong arm.It helps if you aren’t sloshed or if you can free
climb.Lazy souls can throw them off
their balconies. Long laces help. But shoefiti isn't relegated to lace-ups. Shoetrees someties have themes.

Pump Shoetree from Roadside America

In Paris,
Shoefiti is always visible around rue Mouffetard and in Butte aux Cailles. There is even a Sponge Bob hanging on a wire on rue Monge, but he doesn' count, he's a heel

Where have
you tossed your shoes?Send me your
photos and I’ll post them here.

I am a sausage

I am

an American-born paintaholic who writes. Paris is home but before moving here I lived too long in Florence, Italy where I spent years copywriting for my gallery.

I participate in writing workshops here and there. Currently I sign my paintings Brooksby but You can find my works signed: AB, Beliza, Figé. Like Kudosai, who changed his signature with his technique.